1. Reflect on your current assessment practices. How have you been determining what students understand and what they are able to do? When I started at Pier Middle School, Students were just finishing a Catastrophic events unit. When I started teaching the students, I decided to begin with this informal assessment activity. I wanted to see what kind of prior knowledge they had, and how well they could use their deductive reasoning skills to solve problems. I will further explain this activity in the informal assessment sections. After this assessment, I continued to use oral questioning and opening questions to determine how well students understood what we've previously gone over. I feel inquiry activities are great to not only assess what students know, but how well they can either use what they know, or figure out what they need to know in order to solve problems. These skills are important to science classrooms.
2. Describe the concept(s) that you are trying to assess in these assignments. Include a link to the appropriate GSE(s) on RIScienceTeachers. Be sure to include in your description your definition, examples of what it is, why students have difficulty with this concept, and why it is important that you teach this topic. These assessments that I will be discussing are based on Forces and Motion. There are a lot of misconceptions to address in this unit, which is why I started it with the informal inquiry assessment to determine what misconceptions my students had. The following link discusses the GSEs associated with these assessments and some of the common misconceptions that are included within these topics. Unpacked GSE
3. (and 7) Describe an informal assessment that you selected, modified, or designed to address this concept. Summarize the instructions you gave your students and Include a link to the informal assessment here as well.
This inquiry activity was given to the students the first day of the Forces unit. It is designed to determine what prior knowledge students have about forces and motion, and what their misconceptions might be. It is also designed to assess students' deductive reasoning and higher level thinking skills. In this activity, students are given a variety of materials and asked to design a balloon powered car that will go 2.5 meters and also go the fastest. I found this lab in a forces unit and modified it to fit the needs of my class. I also "NeCAPed" this lab to begin to give students practice with the format of the NECAP testing. Students were given the task packet:
Teacher and students read through entire packet first.
On page one: Teacher told the students that it is important to keep the vocabulary words in mind throughout the entire lab. They can be very helpful in designing and analyzing the cars. It is also expected that the vocab words are used withing the writing in the packet.
On Page two: Teacher showed the students each material and explained that students will not get replacement materials, so it is imperative that students plan carefully before cutting anything. Teacher also told students that the information on the bottom of the page is very helpful to keep in mind while conducting the investigation.
On page three: Teacher told students that they will need to find three variables that they could change on their car to make it faster. Each variable needs to be addressed in a separate prediction. Each prediction should start with I Predict...if...then....because!.
On Page Four: Teacher asked students to tell the class what relationships they saw in the data tables. When they answer the questions, they should address each relationship referring specifically to each table. Then they should say how that information would help their design, describing what they would change on their car.
On page five: Teacher told students to change all 3meters in the tables to 2.5 meters. Then teacher told students that they will do three trials with their car after they finish their design. They can test it in the room to make sure it will move, but cannot test it on the track until ready to take time trials. Then students should calculate their speeds and average speed. Then students should evaluate their design and determine what they could fix on their car. They should also say why they made the changes that they did. Once changes are made, students should do three more trials and recalculate their speed. Once students are finished, students should write their conclusions. (More instructions given when conclusions are done).
Once teacher and students read through entire packet. Students are broken into pairs and told to write their predictions. to help them, the following Graphic organizer is given:
Students and teacher go over that a dependent and independent variable is.
After students write their predictions and teacher approves, they go to part two and write about the relationships in the tables and decide how that might change their designs.
Once this is done, students can get materials and begin their investigations.
Once everyone is close to finished, teacher goes over the conclusions. Following sheet given to assist students:
Students should first restate the problem of the lab.
They should then state their predictions and why they were correct or incorrect.
This should be all supported with data.
Then they should answer the question about telling their sibling how to design the car based on what they found (use data)
They should mention their improvements and if they worked.
They should also determine what went wrong in their investigation and why there was error. They should address their design in comparison with other designs in the class.
Once everything is addressed, students should follow up their investigation by stating what other questions they have that they want to investigate.
4. (and 8) Create a formal assessment. Describe this assessment, including concepts, types of items, and how it was assessed. Include a link to a copy of the assessment here as well. The formal assessment that I used was a summative quiz on forces.
. This quiz includes fill in the blanks, short answer, true/false, and a matching type of questions. The fill in the blanks are mostly knowledge based. Some include comprehension because they ask students to extend their understanding of a concept. The short answers are mostly application. Students are asked to apply concepts and principles to new situations. There are a few comprehension questions, asking students to justify their responses and give examples. The true and false questions are composed of analysis type questions in which students discriminate between the logic of concepts applied to different situations. The rest of the questions are application and ask students to apply the concepts by matching the correct concept to the correct situation. This quiz includes the concepts in the balloon car inquiry in a more depth and broad manner. The concepts are forces, balanced and unbalanced forces, friction, inertia, F=ma, and free fall. Each question has a point value and students were assessed based on whether or not they completed all necessary information. Students receive partial or full credit based on answering the question correctly and including all necessary parts of the answer.
Why didn't you include Newton's Laws in your list of concepts?
5. Develop the evaluation criteria (or key) for your formal assessment or link it here.
This is the key for my assessment to show how many points are assigned to each question and how partial credit is given.
6. Develop the evaluation criteria (or key) for your informal assessment or link it here. This description should include the assessment's features, how it addresses different depths of knowledge, as well as an explanation of how it addresses a scientific practice related to inquiry.
This assessment addresses several different depths of knowledge from simple recall to extended thinking. In level two, it asks students to make a decision as to how to approach the problem, organize data, make observations and interpret information. In level three, students are asked to explain thinking beyond simple explanation. They have to back up their predictions and changes with reasonings based on prior knowledge and observations. Being an inquiry task, students are asked to use level four skills by selecting and advising an approach to solve the problem. Based on this, the task is a true inquiry assessment. For example, students must be able to identify questions and to hypothesize about scientific investigations. They are required to perform scientific methods and revise their hypothesis. They also must evaluate their own procedure and findings based on their results and the predictions they made.
If this activity occurs at the beginning of the unit, then what knowledge do you expect students to have?
What do you have in mind when you say that students will "explain thinking beyond simple explanation?" How did you prompt students to do this?
7. & 8. - Already addressed above.
9. For your informal assessment, upload scans of the work of three or four students. The work of each student should be on a different page. At the bottom of each students' page, you should describe the level of student understanding, e.g. high, average, or low, and describe how this is indicated in their answers. An example of how to do this is here. Note: Remember to name the pages you create carefully, e.g. "Smith S10 - High Performing" instead of "High-Performing." High Performing Average Performing Low Performing I chose the student work that I did because I wanted to include examples from students that all put in effort to answer the questions. I had several lower performing students, but they neglected to answer so many of the questions, that it wasn't a true indication of performance. These were chosen based on the performance levels of students that actually completed the work and put in some effort to do it correctly.
10 For you formal assessment, describe how you think it addressed the concepts you were trying to assess? How did you modify the assessment to address learning differences or special needs?
I feel that this formal assessment addressed all of the concepts that I was trying to address. Before I made it, I made a list of all of the concepts that the students learned (including the labs they did with them) and decided how high I should expect them be able to answer these questions. The concepts that were not gone into depth on (i.e. Newton's laws) were only addressed as comprehension and knowledge questions. The students were only required to know what each law states. They were given situations that describe the laws, and if they knew what the law was, they could answer which law was described without going into higher level thinking. Other concepts, however, the students had more in depth instructions on. For example, the idea of forces and the concept of making something faster by changing characteristics, was a topic that we spent a good amount of time on, and the students had several concert examples from labs to relate the concepts to. Therefore, in my questions I asked knowledge and comprehension questions, but I also asked the students to apply their comprehension to new situations. I did the same with free fall, as we spent a lot of time talking about free fall and the fact that mass has no effect on the rate of free fall. Therefore, I expected students to be able to apply this concept to a situation in which they were asked to predict which item would fall first if dropped at the same time/height. They also had to explain why this was. (A more complete list of cognitive levels is above in question 4 response.) I did not need to modify this for any special needs. The only accommodation required by IEPs I had in my class was to allow extra time to certain students that needed it. To address learning differences, I gave a variety of question types to address these differences. I also scaffolded the questions in such a way that the beginning ones were easier and had lower cognitive domains.
III. Analysis / Reflection
11. Use both the informal and formal assessments to describe what you learned about what your students understand about these concepts. Use specific examples from both the informal and formal assessment to illustrate your points. What can your students do now that they could not before, and what do they still need to learn?
When analyzing the informal assessment, I learned that my students had a lot of prior knowledge about making cars or objects go faster based on design. I also learned that they had some misconceptions. For example, many thought that smoothing out the wheels to reduce friction would make it go faster. However, with no friction, the car would not move forward.
Really? How can this be true? Do the wheels propel the car or does the balloon? If the car is wheel-driven, then it must have sufficient weight in order for the wheels to get traction. (That is why pickup truck owners often place sandbags in their empty cargo areas during the winter when their (rear) drive wheels might have to turn on ice. If the air from the balloon provides thrust against the air, then the wheels are just low-friction supports for the car.
Students also knew that more force needed to be applied to the object to make it go faster and that it would get slowed down if it is heavier. Students easily figured out that the more air they put in the balloon (more pressure), the more force would be applied to the car.
Is this true? One of your high performing students found the opposite, though he/she did not provide evidence. (See balloonex2x.pdf). This may be the case because your finish line is so close to the start that a full balloon may be more stretched out and therefore pushes out air will less force than a less inflated balloon.
By the analysis of the formal assessment, I learned that most students had cleared up their misconceptions. Some, however, still believed that a car should have smooth wheels and that salting a road decreases friction. From this, I learned that the students needed more instruction on friction in order to understand this concept fully. Students had grasped the concept of balanced and unbalanced forces very well. In my formal assessment, no students got those questions wrong. Some only missed points for not including necessary information that I asked for. I learned that students also had a good grasp of free fall. We spent a lot of time discussing how mass doesn't have an effect on the rate of free fall, and by the formal assessment analysis, I see that they really understood it. I gave them different objects and had them predict which would fall first and to fully explain why, if I dropped them from the same height at the same time. They all knew that the shape of the object would play a big role in how the object fell.
12. OMIT
13. For your formal assessment only, select one student characteristic, e.g. ability, gender, age, etc) and compare the relative performance of each group. Hint: Use box and whiskers plots to compare the two groups. What do you conclude from this comparison? Why? I chose to do my comparison based on ability because I had two low level classes and two high level classes. So I compared the two classes to see how each did in relation to each other. They both had the same exam. The only accommodations that some of the low level students needed was extra time to complete the quiz.By looking at the scores for both classes types, I can evaluate my teaching based on my abilities to differentiate my instructions enough to reach both the low level learners and the high level learners. This aligns with my teaching philosophy that all students, regardless of abilities and backgrounds, should have an equal opportunity to learn in my class.
This assessment was based out of 52 points. If we look at the box and whiskers plot, we can see that both levels had students that reached 55 points, which is a perfect score with three extra credit questions correct. The lower extreme on the low level class was 33, and the high level class was 29. So this tells me that: 1. Everyone got over 55% on the assessment, so my questions were tailored so that it was not too easy, but not so hard that the students were not prepared to complete based on my instructions. and 2. The low level class did not do any worse than the high level class on the whole. If we look at the quartile boxes, we see that more of the higher level students received higher scores, while the low level class was more evenly distributed. This is what should be expected for an assessment without the need for any modifications. This tells me that my teaching was differentiated enough that all students had an equal opportunity and that my assessment was constructed in a way that assessed multiple levels of knowledge. This means that the lower level students would have a harder time with the higher level thinking questions, but they were not so out of reach that the students couldn't be successful. The students had practice with these types of questions throughout the entire unit. I could not expect the students to answer such questions if my instructions were not aligned with that depth of knowledge. In that case the assessment would not be fair, and would not give an equal opportunity for all students regardless of ability or background. So based on this analysis, I would say that my teaching instructions align with my philosophies very well.
14. Describe any ways in which you involved students in self-assessment. How did you communicate what you learned from your informal and formal assessments to your students? What did they do with this information?
After giving my students the informal assessment, I realized that students needed more practice with friction and with completing that type of inquiry activity. I went through the informal assessment with my students thoroughly, so that they would understand the format and the concepts they should have gotten. I gave the students another inquiry assignment about friction after learning about friction in class. This one was not graded. Instead, we went through the rubric together and the students were asked to go through their task answers with a partner and determine what grade they would get and what they need to do to improve. I feel this was very effective, because when given another inquiry task on free fall, students did very well on the whole. After the formal assessment, I told the students how they did, and reviewed some concepts about friction, so that they would understand what they did wrong.
That sounds like a good approach to followup on what you found out.
15: Most Important: Compare your objectives for student learning (both in terms of science concepts and practices) to the student learning you observed. What did you learn about your teaching based on the student performances? What will you do differently next time? Why would you make these changes? What, if anything, will you do to improve the assessment instruments?
Objectives for students learning for informal assessment:
The student is expected to:
(A) plan and implement experimental procedures including asking questions, formulating testable hypotheses, and selecting equipment and technology;
(B) collect data and make measurements with precision;
(C) organize, analyze, evaluate, make inferences, and predict trends from data
(D) communicate valid conclusions.
(E) investigate and describe applications of Newton’s Laws of motion and forces.
The student uses:
(A) scientific methods during field and laboratory investigations.
(B) critical thinking and scientific problem solving to make informed decisions.
Student learning observed: Students planned and implemented experimental procedures by formulating testable hypotheses and selecting equipment. They didn't, however, ask questions to further their investigations. They also collected, organized, and analyzed data. They didn't evaluate their data as much as I had hoped. They also lacked at communicating conclusions. Students did not know how to use scientific investigations and scientific writing as much as I hoped they would. I didn't learn that much on my teaching because this was my first lesson with my students. This did, however, tell me what I needed to work on with my students. I also learned that I needed to be extremely clear when giving instructions to the students and also provide as much supplemental material as I can. I need to teach my students the skills necessary to perform this type of task and to read and follow instructions to be successful in all assessments.
So your findings suggest that you learned something about your students. I would agree with your conclusions. How could you adjust you informal assessment in the future to make it a better learning experience for your students? For example, why did you ask them to make predictions about three variables but not give them plenty of room for experimental trials. Some of your students' comments suggested that they varied more than one variable in a single trial. How would you discourage this in the future?
Objectives for student learning for both informal and formal assessment:
Students will formulate predictions and justify their responses based on standard scientific writing methods.
Students will understand and apply the relationships between force, mass, and speed by utilizing logical reasoning and implementing scientific investigations.
Students will understand the concept unbalanced and balanced forces by investigating frictional and gravitational forces. Student learning observed:
Based on my observations, students made significant progress in performing scientific investigations and utilizing scientific writing skills. This tells me that all the scaffolding and practice that I gave the students paid off. The students also grasped the concepts of forces, mass, and speed by applying these concepts to scientific investigations and new situations. The students did well with gravitational forces, but had trouble with frictional forces. This tells me that I need to do more frequent informal assessments to determine my students' understanding and misconceptions. Then I could spend more time on the topics that they need help with and clear up any problems that they have. I also need to differentiate my instruction more for difficult topics so that all students can be successful. Next time I would do all of this, and hopefully students would do better on the formal assessment. I feel that my assessments, however do not need any changes. If anything, I would break up my informal assessment more, so that students follow my instructions. I would have them do it in smaller sections while reminding them what I am asking them to do. For the formal assessment, I feel that my instructions were good and do not need any changes.
I'm not sure that the balloon car is a good way to investigate friction unless you get rid of the wheels and make them sleds. The main force for the cars was the balloon thrust, right?
There are several items on your test that could be clarified. Is it always the case that the friction force opposes motion? What do you mean to say that increasing an object's mass will decrease its speed? Would your students be able to explain WHY all objects accelerate at the same rate near the earth's surface? What are the key ideas about friction that you should focus on? (e.g. sliding friction does not depend on surface area, but does depend on the object's weight.) What questions did your best students get wrong? Did you ask them why they answered as they did? This is a good way to improve an existing test for next time.
Formal and Informal Assessment of Student Learning
Name: Britta Leigh
I. Assignment Description/Requirements
II. Preparation / Development
1. Reflect on your current assessment practices. How have you been determining what students understand and what they are able to do?
When I started at Pier Middle School, Students were just finishing a Catastrophic events unit. When I started teaching the students, I decided to begin with this informal assessment activity. I wanted to see what kind of prior knowledge they had, and how well they could use their deductive reasoning skills to solve problems. I will further explain this activity in the informal assessment sections. After this assessment, I continued to use oral questioning and opening questions to determine how well students understood what we've previously gone over. I feel inquiry activities are great to not only assess what students know, but how well they can either use what they know, or figure out what they need to know in order to solve problems. These skills are important to science classrooms.
2. Describe the concept(s) that you are trying to assess in these assignments. Include a link to the appropriate GSE(s) on RIScienceTeachers. Be sure to include in your description your definition, examples of what it is, why students have difficulty with this concept, and why it is important that you teach this topic.
These assessments that I will be discussing are based on Forces and Motion. There are a lot of misconceptions to address in this unit, which is why I started it with the informal inquiry assessment to determine what misconceptions my students had. The following link discusses the GSEs associated with these assessments and some of the common misconceptions that are included within these topics.
Unpacked GSE
3. (and 7) Describe an informal assessment that you selected, modified, or designed to address this concept. Summarize the instructions you gave your students and Include a link to the informal assessment here as well.
This inquiry activity was given to the students the first day of the Forces unit. It is designed to determine what prior knowledge students have about forces and motion, and what their misconceptions might be. It is also designed to assess students' deductive reasoning and higher level thinking skills. In this activity, students are given a variety of materials and asked to design a balloon powered car that will go 2.5 meters and also go the fastest. I found this lab in a forces unit and modified it to fit the needs of my class. I also "NeCAPed" this lab to begin to give students practice with the format of the NECAP testing. Students were given the task packet:
4. (and 8) Create a formal assessment. Describe this assessment, including concepts, types of items, and how it was assessed. Include a link to a copy of the assessment here as well.
The formal assessment that I used was a summative quiz on forces.
Why didn't you include Newton's Laws in your list of concepts?
5. Develop the evaluation criteria (or key) for your formal assessment or link it here.
This is the key for my assessment to show how many points are assigned to each question and how partial credit is given.
6. Develop the evaluation criteria (or key) for your informal assessment or link it here. This description should include the assessment's features, how it addresses different depths of knowledge, as well as an explanation of how it addresses a scientific practice related to inquiry.
This assessment addresses several different depths of knowledge from simple recall to extended thinking. In level two, it asks students to make a decision as to how to approach the problem, organize data, make observations and interpret information. In level three, students are asked to explain thinking beyond simple explanation. They have to back up their predictions and changes with reasonings based on prior knowledge and observations. Being an inquiry task, students are asked to use level four skills by selecting and advising an approach to solve the problem. Based on this, the task is a true inquiry assessment. For example, students must be able to identify questions and to hypothesize about scientific investigations. They are required to perform scientific methods and revise their hypothesis. They also must evaluate their own procedure and findings based on their results and the predictions they made.
If this activity occurs at the beginning of the unit, then what knowledge do you expect students to have?
What do you have in mind when you say that students will "explain thinking beyond simple explanation?" How did you prompt students to do this?
7. & 8. - Already addressed above.
9. For your informal assessment, upload scans of the work of three or four students. The work of each student should be on a different page. At the bottom of each students' page, you should describe the level of student understanding, e.g. high, average, or low, and describe how this is indicated in their answers. An example of how to do this is here. Note: Remember to name the pages you create carefully, e.g. "Smith S10 - High Performing" instead of "High-Performing."
High Performing
Average Performing
Low Performing
I chose the student work that I did because I wanted to include examples from students that all put in effort to answer the questions. I had several lower performing students, but they neglected to answer so many of the questions, that it wasn't a true indication of performance. These were chosen based on the performance levels of students that actually completed the work and put in some effort to do it correctly.
10 For you formal assessment, describe how you think it addressed the concepts you were trying to assess? How did you modify the assessment to address learning differences or special needs?
I feel that this formal assessment addressed all of the concepts that I was trying to address. Before I made it, I made a list of all of the concepts that the students learned (including the labs they did with them) and decided how high I should expect them be able to answer these questions. The concepts that were not gone into depth on (i.e. Newton's laws) were only addressed as comprehension and knowledge questions. The students were only required to know what each law states. They were given situations that describe the laws, and if they knew what the law was, they could answer which law was described without going into higher level thinking. Other concepts, however, the students had more in depth instructions on. For example, the idea of forces and the concept of making something faster by changing characteristics, was a topic that we spent a good amount of time on, and the students had several concert examples from labs to relate the concepts to. Therefore, in my questions I asked knowledge and comprehension questions, but I also asked the students to apply their comprehension to new situations. I did the same with free fall, as we spent a lot of time talking about free fall and the fact that mass has no effect on the rate of free fall. Therefore, I expected students to be able to apply this concept to a situation in which they were asked to predict which item would fall first if dropped at the same time/height. They also had to explain why this was. (A more complete list of cognitive levels is above in question 4 response.) I did not need to modify this for any special needs. The only accommodation required by IEPs I had in my class was to allow extra time to certain students that needed it. To address learning differences, I gave a variety of question types to address these differences. I also scaffolded the questions in such a way that the beginning ones were easier and had lower cognitive domains.
III. Analysis / Reflection
11. Use both the informal and formal assessments to describe what you learned about what your students understand about these concepts. Use specific examples from both the informal and formal assessment to illustrate your points. What can your students do now that they could not before, and what do they still need to learn?
When analyzing the informal assessment, I learned that my students had a lot of prior knowledge about making cars or objects go faster based on design. I also learned that they had some misconceptions. For example, many thought that smoothing out the wheels to reduce friction would make it go faster. However, with no friction, the car would not move forward.
Really? How can this be true? Do the wheels propel the car or does the balloon? If the car is wheel-driven, then it must have sufficient weight in order for the wheels to get traction. (That is why pickup truck owners often place sandbags in their empty cargo areas during the winter when their (rear) drive wheels might have to turn on ice. If the air from the balloon provides thrust against the air, then the wheels are just low-friction supports for the car.
Students also knew that more force needed to be applied to the object to make it go faster and that it would get slowed down if it is heavier. Students easily figured out that the more air they put in the balloon (more pressure), the more force would be applied to the car.
Is this true? One of your high performing students found the opposite, though he/she did not provide evidence. (See balloonex2x.pdf). This may be the case because your finish line is so close to the start that a full balloon may be more stretched out and therefore pushes out air will less force than a less inflated balloon.
By the analysis of the formal assessment, I learned that most students had cleared up their misconceptions. Some, however, still believed that a car should have smooth wheels and that salting a road decreases friction. From this, I learned that the students needed more instruction on friction in order to understand this concept fully. Students had grasped the concept of balanced and unbalanced forces very well. In my formal assessment, no students got those questions wrong. Some only missed points for not including necessary information that I asked for. I learned that students also had a good grasp of free fall. We spent a lot of time discussing how mass doesn't have an effect on the rate of free fall, and by the formal assessment analysis, I see that they really understood it. I gave them different objects and had them predict which would fall first and to fully explain why, if I dropped them from the same height at the same time. They all knew that the shape of the object would play a big role in how the object fell.
12. OMIT
13. For your formal assessment only, select one student characteristic, e.g. ability, gender, age, etc) and compare the relative performance of each group. Hint: Use box and whiskers plots to compare the two groups. What do you conclude from this comparison? Why?
I chose to do my comparison based on ability because I had two low level classes and two high level classes. So I compared the two classes to see how each did in relation to each other. They both had the same exam. The only accommodations that some of the low level students needed was extra time to complete the quiz. By looking at the scores for both classes types, I can evaluate my teaching based on my abilities to differentiate my instructions enough to reach both the low level learners and the high level learners. This aligns with my teaching philosophy that all students, regardless of abilities and backgrounds, should have an equal opportunity to learn in my class.
This assessment was based out of 52 points. If we look at the box and whiskers plot, we can see that both levels had students that reached 55 points, which is a perfect score with three extra credit questions correct. The lower extreme on the low level class was 33, and the high level class was 29. So this tells me that: 1. Everyone got over 55% on the assessment, so my questions were tailored so that it was not too easy, but not so hard that the students were not prepared to complete based on my instructions. and 2. The low level class did not do any worse than the high level class on the whole. If we look at the quartile boxes, we see that more of the higher level students received higher scores, while the low level class was more evenly distributed. This is what should be expected for an assessment without the need for any modifications. This tells me that my teaching was differentiated enough that all students had an equal opportunity and that my assessment was constructed in a way that assessed multiple levels of knowledge. This means that the lower level students would have a harder time with the higher level thinking questions, but they were not so out of reach that the students couldn't be successful. The students had practice with these types of questions throughout the entire unit. I could not expect the students to answer such questions if my instructions were not aligned with that depth of knowledge. In that case the assessment would not be fair, and would not give an equal opportunity for all students regardless of ability or background. So based on this analysis, I would say that my teaching instructions align with my philosophies very well.
14. Describe any ways in which you involved students in self-assessment. How did you communicate what you learned from your informal and formal assessments to your students? What did they do with this information?
After giving my students the informal assessment, I realized that students needed more practice with friction and with completing that type of inquiry activity. I went through the informal assessment with my students thoroughly, so that they would understand the format and the concepts they should have gotten. I gave the students another inquiry assignment about friction after learning about friction in class. This one was not graded. Instead, we went through the rubric together and the students were asked to go through their task answers with a partner and determine what grade they would get and what they need to do to improve. I feel this was very effective, because when given another inquiry task on free fall, students did very well on the whole. After the formal assessment, I told the students how they did, and reviewed some concepts about friction, so that they would understand what they did wrong.
That sounds like a good approach to followup on what you found out.
15: Most Important: Compare your objectives for student learning (both in terms of science concepts and practices) to the student learning you observed. What did you learn about your teaching based on the student performances? What will you do differently next time? Why would you make these changes? What, if anything, will you do to improve the assessment instruments?
Objectives for students learning for informal assessment:
The student is expected to:
(A) plan and implement experimental procedures including asking questions, formulating testable hypotheses, and selecting equipment and technology;
(B) collect data and make measurements with precision;
(C) organize, analyze, evaluate, make inferences, and predict trends from data
(D) communicate valid conclusions.
(E) investigate and describe applications of Newton’s Laws of motion and forces.
The student uses:
(A) scientific methods during field and laboratory investigations.
(B) critical thinking and scientific problem solving to make informed decisions.
Student learning observed:
Students planned and implemented experimental procedures by formulating testable hypotheses and selecting equipment. They didn't, however, ask questions to further their investigations. They also collected, organized, and analyzed data. They didn't evaluate their data as much as I had hoped. They also lacked at communicating conclusions. Students did not know how to use scientific investigations and scientific writing as much as I hoped they would. I didn't learn that much on my teaching because this was my first lesson with my students. This did, however, tell me what I needed to work on with my students. I also learned that I needed to be extremely clear when giving instructions to the students and also provide as much supplemental material as I can. I need to teach my students the skills necessary to perform this type of task and to read and follow instructions to be successful in all assessments.
So your findings suggest that you learned something about your students. I would agree with your conclusions. How could you adjust you informal assessment in the future to make it a better learning experience for your students? For example, why did you ask them to make predictions about three variables but not give them plenty of room for experimental trials. Some of your students' comments suggested that they varied more than one variable in a single trial. How would you discourage this in the future?
Objectives for student learning for both informal and formal assessment:
Students will formulate predictions and justify their responses based on standard scientific writing methods.
Students will understand and apply the relationships between force, mass, and speed by utilizing logical reasoning and implementing scientific investigations.
Students will understand the concept unbalanced and balanced forces by investigating frictional and gravitational forces.
Student learning observed:
Based on my observations, students made significant progress in performing scientific investigations and utilizing scientific writing skills. This tells me that all the scaffolding and practice that I gave the students paid off. The students also grasped the concepts of forces, mass, and speed by applying these concepts to scientific investigations and new situations. The students did well with gravitational forces, but had trouble with frictional forces. This tells me that I need to do more frequent informal assessments to determine my students' understanding and misconceptions. Then I could spend more time on the topics that they need help with and clear up any problems that they have. I also need to differentiate my instruction more for difficult topics so that all students can be successful. Next time I would do all of this, and hopefully students would do better on the formal assessment. I feel that my assessments, however do not need any changes. If anything, I would break up my informal assessment more, so that students follow my instructions. I would have them do it in smaller sections while reminding them what I am asking them to do. For the formal assessment, I feel that my instructions were good and do not need any changes.
I'm not sure that the balloon car is a good way to investigate friction unless you get rid of the wheels and make them sleds. The main force for the cars was the balloon thrust, right?
There are several items on your test that could be clarified. Is it always the case that the friction force opposes motion? What do you mean to say that increasing an object's mass will decrease its speed? Would your students be able to explain WHY all objects accelerate at the same rate near the earth's surface? What are the key ideas about friction that you should focus on? (e.g. sliding friction does not depend on surface area, but does depend on the object's weight.) What questions did your best students get wrong? Did you ask them why they answered as they did? This is a good way to improve an existing test for next time.